WATER is a matter of life and death in many parts of the world, including across the continent of Africa.

There is a story across Africa that talks of how Africans celebrate when they see the rain clouds emerging after the dry season. The celebrations increase as the rains pour down to give life to the people, the rivers and the crops that they need to survive.

The people of Africa are now at the point of seeing the rain clouds emerging and awaiting the rains of liberation to fall.

This is a moment that must be turned into a movement in a real sense. Not in the way that liberals often pretend to care a damn after one of us is killed by racists — such as George Floyd in the US or Stephen Lawrence in Britain — but to end this period of neocolonialism and birth a new Africa liberated from continued rampant exploitation.

At the heart of this moment is the leader of the revolution taking place in Burkina Faso — interim president Captain Ibrahim Traore.

Activists are increasingly realising Traore’s importance but so do the Western leaders who are behind efforts not just to remove him from power but to assassinate this inspirational leader.

In recent weeks Traore, who came to power by ousting Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in a military operation in 2022, has been subject to what appears to be a Western-backed attempt — fronted by the Ivory Coast — to kill him and end the revolution in Burkina Faso.

Yes, I am calling what is taking place in Burkina Faso a revolution and not rule by a military junta — as the corporate media portrays it. I do so because by any reasonable measure it is nothing short of that.

The same can be said of Mali, under the leadership of General Assimi Goita, and General Abdourahmane Tchiani, the transitional president of Niger.

But there is little doubt that it is Traore who has captured the imagination of the people of the continent and its diaspora in the way he has been prepared to stand up to France, the Sahel region’s former colonial power.

The attempts to murder Traore, estimated to have numbered at least 18 at the time of writing, appear to come directly from the traditional playbook of Western imperial nations that carved up Africa between them at the 1884 Berlin conference.

If an African leader dares to try to lift the Western colonial boot from their necks and insist that the vast mineral resources of the continent be used for the benefit of their people rather than the already rich nations of the global North then they must pay the price.

Anyone reading this who doesn’t understand that Africans have long known there to be a consequence to standing up against the slave master is beyond help. That has been our history on and off the continent for the last 500 years of humiliation and exploitation.

Equally, every African person, on or off the continent, knows full well that we have no alternative but to fight back and relieve ourselves from the yoke of exploitation. We are human beings and have a right to liberate ourselves — as Malcolm X said: “By any means necessary.”

This can stay as a comfortable and nostalgic quotation. But many people across the globe don’t have the luxury of being able to indulge in comfortable nostalgia. For them the priority is to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

So what exactly is it that Traore has done to vex the leaders of the global North so much? If he was just a rent-a-quote-type leader — which he most certainly is not — then he might perhaps be allowed to live.

In fact you will be hard-pressed to find very much said by him in public. Instead he has concentrated on dealing with the issues facing the Bukinabe.

Burkina Faso is a landlocked country with its economy primarily based on agriculture and goldmining and with more than 40 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.

A major drain on the Bukinabe is the fight against jihadist terrorism across a large proportion of the country. To fight this battle the country is forced to spend a large amount of its meagre income on weapons to defend itself.

The fighting has caused widespread displacement of people. More than two million of the country’s approximately 20 million population have been displaced, according to the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

There is a strong belief in the country that the jihadists are receiving Western funding and that this is being used to destabilise the nation so that the former colonial ruler, France, can be called in to play a greater role.

Whatever the truth of this, it means the resources that Traore has left to draw on to fund services such as health and education are extremely scarce.

Healthcare provision is severely disrupted and, as of March 31 2024, a total of 5,319 primary and secondary schools had been closed, representing 20.45 per cent of all educational infrastructure. This has disrupted access to education for around 818,149 students.

Sovereignty is everything — especially to nations that have been systematically denied it for centuries.

Kicking the French out of the Sahel and creating an economic and cultural future that is more African-centred rather than Eurocentric, as Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have all done, is a vital step towards achieving sovereignty.

The creation of the Alliance of Sahel States in September 2023 was both an effort to co-ordinate the fight against terrorism and a loud call that the times are changing and these nations were serious about prioritising the people rather than monopoly capital interests.

The withdrawal in January 2024 from the Economic Community of West African States and the International Organisation of La Francophonie sent a message to the rest of Africa that the old compliance of African institutions was failing to serve the people and that the French were out — and out for good.

These are all massive challenges to Western powers that have been able to exercise their power through the bought and paid-for institutions, such as Ecowas and the African Union, that have largely done as they were told since being created.

Traore is challenging the West and attempting to rebuild his country in the tradition of his great predecessor Thomas Sankara.

Like Sankara, Traore is a beacon of hope to his long-exploited country. But in the West rulers understand the dangers to them of allowing Traore’s revolution to succeed. That is why they will continue to seek to kill him and extinguish the flames of hope.

This is why Ibrahim Traore matters and why we must work to support him and the people of Burkina Faso.